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Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Murdoch: Journalism as Vengence

According to
Reuters, “News Corp, whose global media interests stretch from
movies to newspapers that can make or break political careers, has endured an
onslaught of negative press since a phone-hacking scandal at its News of the
World tabloid” in 2011. One danger in this mix of private power even over
government officials and being publicly criticized is that Rupert Murdoch could
use his power in vengeance to retaliate. The public does not often suspect that
such a high-profile and financially successful person could act so
irresponsibility, but we ought not take what we are shown at face value. There
is, after all, a public relations industry.

Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp.

As reported by a few government officials and press outfits in
the E.U., the News of the World tabloid’s managers had been
paying off state police in Britain in order to hack the phones of government officials and
celebrities, those managers reacted by retaliating by hiring at least one
private detective to follow Tom Watson, a member of the British House of Commons, and Mark Lewis, a lawyer. A biographer who had been in regular contact with
Rupert Murdoch over months told Frontline (PBS) that Murdoch had a habit of remarking that he
had pictures of this person or another—meaning that if people did not measure up, Murdoch would destroy them publically. His newspapers, which were not that profitable anyway, were for such influence over
government officials or otherwise retaliating against "enemies."

After “the British Broadcasting Corporation and the
Australian Financial Review newspaper . . .
said [in March 2012] that News Corp's pay-TV smartcard security unit,
NDS, had promoted piracy attacks on rivals,” Murdoch tweeted: "Seems every
competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels. So bad, easy to hit back
hard, which preparing.” This reply is telling, for it makes Murdoch’s
overriding instinct to exact vengeance transparent. Even referring to critics
as enemies is excessive, given the possibility that Murdoch’s company had at
the very least broken the law in Europe by paying off a police department and
hacking into private voicemail accounts.

To claim that someone is an enemy simply for uncovering
or reporting illegal or unethical activities merely points back to the source
as sordid and perhaps even pathological in nature. "Enemies many different
agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingers who still want last century's
status quo with their monopolies," he tweeted. “Toff” itself might be a
relic of a prior century; I have never heard of the word. Moreover, Murdoch’s
squalid approach to business might hopefully be one day relegated to an earlier
age, if there is such a thing as progress in terms of business ethics.

The lesson for us goes beyond one newspaper man, whether
it be Hearst in the twentieth century or Murdoch in the twenty-first (at least
physically). Might it be that we, the general public, assume too much regarding
the maturity of people of position, even if the status has come in part from
having built up a company from the ground up? Might it be that we ascribe too
much to status itself—that we are in
a status society wherein position counts for more than is entitled? Consider,
for example, the childish mentality and behavior of Richard Fuld, the CEO who
brought Lehman Brothers down in 2008 by piling on real estate debt to excess in
an effort to catch up to JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

If with great power comes great responsibility—a phrase
uttered by Cliff Robertson in the film, Spiderman—then
what do we do when childish, vengeful people are ensconced in positions of
power? Considering the damage such people can wreck out of a sense of being
personally wronged, society itself has the right to step in and rid the
offenders of such power. I am not suggesting a personality test that they must
pass every few years like renewing a driver’s license. Rather, once scandal has
broken out in a major company, a government’s justice department should be able
to have a presence in the company, keeping the CEO on a firm leash.

Unfortunately, where a society (and government) finds it
to be in its interest to allow private power to be amassed to such an extent
that the government itself can no longer act as a corrective on a company’s
CEO, then the society really is at the mercy of a spoiled child. At the very
least, we ought to recognize a CEO such as Fuld or Murdoch as such. If we then
look the other way, we have only ourselves to blame for whatever havoc they
wreck.